Castle Paradox

[Valigarmander]

That's because they're jackasses.

[Moogle1]

Some linguists speculate that a name can cause a person to grow up a certain way. In other words, it is not merely that most people named Simon are skinny and wear glasses, but naming your kid Simon may cause him to be skinny and wear glasses.

Whether or not this is true, humanity has a long-standing tradition of naming children after who we want them to be. Christians give children Biblical names; Siddhartha and Mohammed are common Indian and Islamic names, respectively.

If that's the case, why should you not name your character (or town, or monster, or game, or...) based on who you want him to be? Nonsense words or names that merely sound cool lack substance. Names can be aesthetic, creating a mood; or they can be symbolic, indicating a theme. A name has too much potential to waste by making it meaningless!

For a discussion of the symbolism behind the names in Darkmoor Dungeon, I refer you here (contains spoilers):
http://castleparadox.com/viewjournaltopic.php?t=197
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[planethunter]

What I do is, think of a word or (two words) that best describe the character. A simple noun will do.

Then try to think of any good synonyms for that word or words. What's fun to do is use a good thesaurus to look up a synonym, and then a synonym for that, and so on until you find one that sounds cool or really suits the character, or both.

Finally I usually modify the final word slightly, for example, maybe add on an 'a' at the end of it if the character is female.

And there you have it.
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~PH

[Camdog]

[Setu_Firestorm]

Camdog: Okay, so it seems that our little debate was just a matter of both of us being on two different pages. Basically, Moogle illustrated my point in a more direct manner than I did. What he said was basically what I was trying to say, but didn't quite get the words out right.
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Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/georgerpowell
Newgrounds: http://setu-firestorm.newgrounds.com

[Valigarmander]

Zounds! A battle has broken out! Fiends! Now, prepare for my SUPER SPIN ATTACK!

[J.A.R.S.]

I personally use some hand-made name generator.
names ending with a vowel are often attributed to women, I try to keep the Ks and Rs to strong people with a touch of evil
for this reason, names such as Kruarg are just male, and more often than not, for villains. Names such Ariel (ok ok, that's an angelic name, I know) are more feminine (note that as far as names are concerned, the L letter at the end of a word, preceded by a vowel, counts as an ending vowel for various linguistic reasons).
Of course, a manly girl could inherit a name such a Bustradad (ok, plain random examples!) even if it ends with a consonnant because, as soon as you see who she is and hear her name, you just know for a fact she's not a conventionnal rpg-girl.
I also try to hide words in the name, often, a trait of the person. For example, storm and gale are good signs of a temperament, so the name Storgal (not mine, sorry) is a good english contradiction of the two and can distantly refer to a character with a temper.
The inclusion of latin desinences (not sure that is the english word for them) can be of help, especially the contraction of two words. This one example is not of a hero, but in one of my games, I use the name potensacrum which basically translates back to "sacred-object". That's a way to make something not cool, cool again. Portensacrum sounds so much more like crystal and so not like "sacred object".

So ya, to sum it up, sounds of the letters matter, and meaning of the words too, I think.

[Newbie_Power]

I roll a 1d20.

[J.A.R.S.]

minus tac0?

[Joe Man]

I like to think about my character and people I know (of) with parents like that character (unless I have a big family tree planned out). For example: currently I am writing a radioplay script I hope to eventually play on NPR or something, and in it is a mysterious billionaire named Portugal Stew. I derived the name from American McGee, who's mother was an eccentric hippie and made me think of him, as in his role he is obviously an eccentric simply wanting to be weird or whatever.
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"Everyone has 200,000 bad drawings in them, the sooner you get them out the better."
~Charles Martin Jones

Last edited by Joe Man on Fri Dec 13, 1957 1:21 am; edited 2,892 time in total